


love written by the broken hearted

by bittereternity



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Magic Realism, Schmoop, Season 1, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-08
Updated: 2013-05-08
Packaged: 2017-12-10 20:00:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/789591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bittereternity/pseuds/bittereternity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John is too many words of the thesaurus for Sherlock to enunciate in one breath. Or, Sherlock has been stealing smiles ever since he was a child. Literally.  And John, well, John has the most beautiful smile he's ever seen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	love written by the broken hearted

*

Her smile, I’m sure, burnt Rome to the ground.

Mark Z. Danielewski, _House of Leaves_

_*_

The first time, like all other firsts in Sherlock’s life is boringly, predictably _ordinary._ In fact, it is so tedious that it doesn’t occur to him to pay attention, to look up at the right moment.

He’s in the morgue at Barts, bending upon a slide and trying to get it just _right_ at the centre of his microscopic stage. He reaches out for the pipette next to him without looking up, and very carefully, meticulously adds one drop of sulphuric acid before placing the coverslip, adjusting its edges so that it encompasses all of the liquid.

He hears footsteps right outside, but footsteps merely signify the presence of someone new and for Sherlock, bending over the microscope and looking for clues to crack his next case, footsteps merely signify a near future where someone invades into his private space in the morgue. It is partly for this reason that he does not look up, does not pay attention and merely hopes that the stranger is intelligent enough to take a hint and leave.

Then he hears another set of footsteps nearing the door, and these are more distinctive, less _ordinary_ simply because they convey an uneven gait, the use of a walking-aid like a cane and presumably, a story behind the asymmetrical sound. They still aren’t interesting enough to warrant an action, especially not when the slide in front of him is testing positive for catalase.

“Bit different from my day,” notes the voice accompanying the uneven gait and the asymmetrical sound.

There’s a laugh, and even though he isn’t paying attention yet, Sherlock recognizes the voice. He holds out his right hand.

“Mike, can I borrow your phone?” he asks.

Mike fumbles around in his jacket, but the man with an asymmetry is already pulling a phone out from his jacket.

“Here, take mine,” he says politely, and Sherlock doesn't pay attention beyond a customary deduction, notes tan lines and sleeve lengths and voice tenors without taking a note of eyes and hands and hearts and _smiles._

“Sherlock Holmes,” he introduces himself finally to the man, the soldier, the returned veteran in front of him and thinks nothing beyond the _ordinary,_ his mind still on the case and a roommate very, very low on his list of priorities. He winks and slips out of the room before Dr. Watson – John – can react.

He winks and slips out of the room, unaware that he’s just missed John’s smile.

*

Sherlock is all of eight with messy hair and skinned knees and grazed elbows when he stands unnoticed in the shadows cast by the trees in his own garden and watches his father leave.

This isn't the first time his father has left; Mummy tells him whenever she’s sober enough to come to dinner that his father is a very busy man and is always hard at work to support the family he loves oh so much. What she doesn't say, and what Sherlock will figure out in a few years is that his father has always been a very busy man, that increasing and maintaining his wealth and status and an imperial sense of superiority mostly just involved frequent meetings and appointments with women half his age who had worn too much perfume and coated their eyelashes with too much mascara.

Cut to the past and Sherlock is all of eight and he watches his father dragging out a suitcase, his tie immaculate and his shoes _clicking_ on the ground in perfect symmetry. From the shadows, he knows that this time isn't quite like all the times before because his mother is nowhere to be seen and Mycroft is standing at the doorway with his jaw hardened, his hands clenched by his sides and a desperate look on his face that Sherlock can’t quite remember seeing before.

There’s a hand on his shoulder, and so involved is he in gathering his father’s last micro-expressions as he barks directions at the chauffeur that he _jumps_ and immediately curses himself for losing his sense of stealth.

Turns out, it’s Mummy.

He turns back from his father getting into the car, turns back and looks up to see his mother. Her make-up is immaculately put on and her hair is tied back in such a way that it hangs straight down her back.

She places a hand on his back and he looks back at her and that’s when he sees it:

He can only watch, fixated in time with a sense of horror engulfing him, as her mouth opens and lips curve upwards and she _allows_ it to happen. She pushes her tongue down and bares the front of her teeth, and he sees not one single imperfection, not one single blemish on her dazzlingly white molars or her painted red lips. She curves her mouth a little further upward and he stands there and looks at her teeth and her lips trying to smile and tries to make sense of it all. He looks at her face and there are no crinkles near her eyes, no pulling of her cheeks or jutting of her chin, no indication at all that any other muscle on her face is capable of functioning.

He stands there, fixated in time and watches Mummy’s bared teeth and empty eyes and it’s the ugliest thing he’s ever seen. It fills him with a sense of rage, a sense of desperation and anger and betrayal and there must be _something_ of it showing in his face because a few seconds later, her teeth are neatly tucked in and her lips are pursed in a flat line.

_Much better,_ he thinks to himself.

*

He will not know it yet, but this is the first time he steals a smile with his eyes. It is an unconscious act, even as he concentrates and takes down her smile with his bare eyes and hides it in the crook of his elbow for further analysis when he’s alone is bed.

Her smile rests on his arm, complete with sharp angles and smudged edges and smells faintly of cherry and blaze in the glory of being red and white and white and red all around.

Like I said, the firsts in his life are always boringly, predictably _ordinary._

*

\- _and._

Later, later when he pushes a seven percent solution of cocaine into his arm and his mind, his ability to observe and find a puzzle amongst the seemingly ordinary has dissolved into its barest shreds, the only thing he can think of, through the blur of colors and signals and edges of furniture all around him, the only thing he can think of is that he would have _never,_ never stolen that smile from Mummy if she had just held his hand instead.

And this will be the point that no one will be observant enough to _grasp;_ that it was never about forgetting, never about escaping whatever pain Mycroft or Mummy might think he’s going through. It’s always been about _feeling_ , feeling for just a second like a human being who is capable of possessing a smile and executing it in the correct situation, feeling like he can fly and live and swim and run and sail and that maybe, maybe he too can look at someone and bare his teeth _just_ right and try to smile.

This will not be the end, for there will be countless rehabs and sterile, white rooms with padded cuffs around his wrist. His throat will reek of vomit and his face and hair will be matted with sweat and sometimes in his blurry vision, he can see Mycroft sitting there with that same desolate, desperate expression he’s seen once before, lips pursed and fists clenched tightly at his sides and barely visible anger bottled up within an expensive suit.

Mycroft will look at him and say _Sherlock_ in a vague tone, and in his withdrawal-induced haze, Sherlock can’t quite decide if Mycroft is pitying him or planning to blow up a small nation.

And sometimes, he can see other people, most of all a middle-aged detective who looms over him without an expression on his face and barely strokes his hand and says _I’m Lestrade_ and Sherlock replies with a _fuck you_ but his eyes are blurry and wet and Lestrade can always read the underlying _thank you, thank you, thank you._

The point is: he _tries._

*

The thing that you have to understand is: he doesn't do it, doesn't _steal_ because he derives any sense of sadistic pleasure in the pain of a stranger. Seeing someone’s face twisting, coming alive in comprehension and struggling to replace the smile that had been there mere seconds ago isn't a form of vindication, isn’t _schadenfreude_ , doesn't set Sherlock’s heart on fire. And it isn’t because he isn’t capable of maliciousness, or because he isn’t capable of punishing equally both the verity and the fallacy in others – and let’s face it, he _is_ \--, it is simply that he’s learnt long back that inflicting pain doesn't work as a substitute for your own. This he’s learned long back, long before he’s learned anything else, long before he learned to call himself a _sociopath,_ long before he acknowledged his own inability to be human: that setting the world on fire isn't a form of virtual carbon dioxide that can ever extinguish the fire inside him. That setting someone else’s world on fire is merely creating poison and arsenic and cyanide and setting up various degrees of suffocation, asphyxiation, torture for no reason _at all_.

The thing is, he steals the smiles in order to satisfy an innate curiosity, because he is genuinely interested to dissect, to look beneath the upwards curve of the lips and the dimples of the cheek and the baring of the teeth. It is simply because he is, always _has been_ , a man of science and science dictates within its roots a sense of curiosity, an indomitable urge to learn what lies beneath, what makes something the way it is. And that’s all Sherlock has ever wanted to do, even when he had been all of eight years with messy hair and skinned knees and grazed elbows and a smile cradled within the crook of his elbow. It isn't, never _has_ been, about causing pain; it’s merely the need to know what comes next, a need to tangibly observe, experience the unknown.

The point has always been this: that for all the things he learns and knows, there is no greater feeling, no bigger sense of exhilaration than _knowing_ for certain what follows the smile, what permutation of molecules and cells and genes and biochemical pathways will tangle together into a knot and trigger the muscles of the mouth to curve a certain way and trigger the muscles of the face to expression a certain _something_ resembling aftermath.

And by what right, by _what_ right do you take away the essence of a smile from a man who’s never had one of his own.

*

Sherlock is thirty-three with messy hair and grazed elbows and skinned knees and he’s almost out of breath as he stands in the landing of 221B with John after running around London chasing after a potential suspect.

Beside him, John is out of breath and is almost on his knees, bending down in order to relieve the pressure on his stomach, and is thumping himself on the chest in an effort to inhale more oxygen into his lungs. Sherlock isn’t paying much attention – as always, when it comes to John, he will learn later – when he hears a distinctly unfamiliar sound.

He briefly glances at the ceiling to locate the source of the noise before realizing that the noise isn't a byproduct of a recent invention of technology or of nearby constructional sites. He watches in wonder, fixated in time as he realizes that the noise is coming from right beside him. The noise is _John._

He can do nothing more than just stare as John’s face _contorts_ into something indistinguishable, a miracle he has never, ever experienced before. John bares his teeth – _all of them_ – and his lips form a curve as they move upwards, almost stretching beyond their limit as his face forms wrinkles all over the contours of his mouth. His cheeks stretch until the flexibility of his muscles seem like an almost painful feat, until the curvature of his lips almost threaten to reach the edges of his ears. His cheeks gain color from what Sherlock can infer is a rush of blood reaching his face, and his eyes narrow until there are crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes, and wrinkles as his eyelids scrunch tighter. John’s irises aren't distinguishable anymore, the sharpened blue of his eyes have dissolved, surrendered into the whitened surrounding as his eyes transform into slits. John’s lips are chapped and hardened and there is a small cut right under his lower lip where he’s cut himself shaving in the morning. His mouth reeks of cheap drug-store toothpaste and mouthwash, and if he allows himself to see very, very carefully, Sherlock can see the smallest smudge of toothpaste on one of his teeth.

John, as it turns out, is as messy in his smiles as he is immaculate in all the other aspects of his life.

And then there’s the _noise_. When he laughs, John releases an echo, a guttural echo that resounds all around the small landing of 221B and that _tugs_ at the corners of Sherlock’s heart that he hadn't even known were present.

And Sherlock watches in wonder, fixated in time and with his mouth barely open, as John’s face, as if almost of its own accord, scrunches up in a mess and his larynx produces a noise of increasing tenor until he is surrounded, captured on all sides by John, _John, John._

It’s the most beautiful mess Sherlock has ever seen.

And something unfamiliar, something unknown and yet indiscernible stirs in his heart even as his mind rejoices at the _possibilities_ of uncovering what sort of tragedy lies beneath this momentary happiness John seems to exude.

So Sherlock takes a little step forward, and looks directly into John’s eyes and looks, looks, _continues_ looking until he effectively plucks the smile over and safely buries it in the crook of his elbow. He watches John’s face return to its normal color, watches the wrinkles smooth out and his mouth closing over his teeth.

He holds John’s smile close to his elbow and watches John’s expression return to its earlier immaculateness.

His chest hurts.

*

Except, except:

Oh, the wonder. Oh, the _beauty._

A second passes. And then another. And then, as if by a magic that cannot be explained by his science and hard facts, John’s face contorts again and he bares his teeth again and releases that _sound,_ that raucous chaos of laughter and once again, Sherlock feels like he can’t breathe, feels like he is drowning on dry land and he clutches even harder at John’s smile by his shoulder and doesn't _understand_.

He holds John’s smile dear, guards it with his own still heart as a tangible, physical proof of _John,_ and listens to the laughter surrounding him in a perfect expression of his scientific anomaly: that beneath his smile, John has another one. And another one.

And another –

Well.

*

The problem is: John is too many words of the thesaurus for Sherlock to enunciate in one breath.

No matter how crafty Sherlock is, no matter how meticulously he practices his art of stealing, John seems to him like a perpetual onion of smiles. Sherlock steals each of them, plucks them out painstakingly with his hands, with his words, with his eyes, with his actions ( _Look John, I bought milk)_ and guards them in that infinite place at the crook of his arm and guards them with his bony elbows.

The problem is: John is too many words of the thesaurus for Sherlock to enunciate in one breath. And the more he guards his smiles and drowns himself in John’s laughter, the harder it gets for him to understand, to _define_ what John is. He has a plethora of adjectives, even the mundane ones like brave and kind and polite and generous, and none of them are _enough._ None of the words in any universal language that he’s aware of is ever worthy of his John.

John, ever smiling, ever brave, ever kind, _is._

*

“You need to move out,” Sherlock finally says over breakfast.

John doesn't blink. He carefully finishes pouring his cup of tea and placing it on the table. “Okay,” he says carefully.

There’s a beat of silence.

“ _Why?_ ” he asks finally.

Sherlock buries his head into his hands and takes a deep breath. He opens his mouth even as no words come out.

“What’s going on, Sherlock?” John presses again.

Sherlock remains resolutely seated on his armchair and presses his lips together without reaction.

John’s voice is firm, albeit kind. “Sherlock, you need to talk to me.”

And something loose and dangling and jagged in Sherlock’s heart _snaps._

“It’s you,” he exclaims loudly. “You’re always here and I can’t stand it. You’re always around and you’re smiling and looking like you’re having a good time, like you’re _genuinely_ enjoying yourself with me which is preposterous and a scientific anomaly because no one has enjoyed spending time with me before. And I don’t understand what to do. No matter how much I try, at the end of the day you’re still smiling and I can’t seem to take your smile away and I don’t know _why._ Do you know just how unsettling it is?”

He reaches forward, groping blindly through wooden angles until he reaches the kitchen and grasps John’s shoulders. He feels John stiffen and wince as he mercilessly applies more pressure on John’s bad shoulder but it’s ultimately irrelevant; at this particular moment, Sherlock can do nothing but _grab_ and shake him vigorously.

“Do you _see?_ ” Sherlock hisses, although his throat feels scratchy and the words blur inside his head. “Do you see that you’re my biggest anomaly, John?”

He can hear John inhale sharply against him and he suddenly releases his grip, letting John stumble backwards a few steps.

Half-ashamed and slightly horrified at his lack of self-control, he turns around. Vaguely behind him, he hears John cough slightly to himself.

“What’s this about, Sherlock?” John’s voice is quite in the aftermath.

Sherlock feels a sudden exhaustion dawn over him from his constant lack of comprehension when it comes to John. All of a sudden, all he wants is to get this over with; he wants to beg, wants to fall in front of John and be _earnest. I will never steal another smile from you again,_ he wants to say, _just please make me understand this._

“John,” Sherlock begins and doesn't quite know how to continue. Turns out, it doesn’t matter because it’s John’s turn to grab him by the shoulders.

John is shorter, stockier and a soldier with a terrifying amount of upper body strength. He grips Sherlock’s soldier in a vice-like grip and Sherlock feels off-balance from the difference in their heights, the difference in their expressions, the difference in their abilities to comprehend humanity.

“Don’t _you_ see, Sherlock?” John hisses his own words back to him. “I smile because of _you,_ you self-depreciating git.” John’s voice is calm, quiet and carries over the vacuum that has accumulated in their room. “I smile because _you_ make me happy, Sherlock, and you cannot take it away anymore than you can annihilate yourself.”

And God, does Sherlock think of several ways to do just that.

And then John continues, still calm, still incredibly kind in the face of a storm. “Don’t you see, Sherlock?” he asks. “Tell me that you _see._ ”

Against all odds, against everything he’s made himself learn, he _does._

*

Sherlock is all of thirty-four with messy hair and skinned knees and grazed elbows and John says: tell me that you see.

John says: Sherlock.

John says a lot of things, looks at him with eyes full of patience and kindness and it tumbles down to the fact that John smiles, no matter how many layers he peels off and how many ways he tries to take it away, steal it all away and keep it hidden for himself forever, John smiles nonetheless and looks at him and without a word, says _I won’t give up, I won’t give up._ And Sherlock feels something _break_ somewhere inside him, finds it difficult to swallow and breathe and move his limbs as the world closes in on him until nothing else exists but him and John’s smiles, all hidden, all arranged by date, time, color of John’s jumper in the crook of his arm.

In a moment of terrible, beautiful insanity, Sherlock loosens his arm the littlest bit and _lets_ it go. He sees the smiles tumble out of his body, sees them simultaneously marveling and terrifying the world as they become free for the first time and float away to the edges of his peripheral vision.

John says, “Sherlock, are you okay? Do you want me to smile again?” His voice holds traces of humor but they are still kind, still loving and patient and _waiting._

Sherlock smiles. Murmurs: “It’s weird. I’ve never actually _given_ out a smile before.”

There is a beat of silence and then John – sweet, kind, wonderful John with his ridiculous jumpers and bottles of milk and carefully folded newspapers, John who has spent years saving the country only to come back and save Sherlock all over again – John takes a step forward until he’s right beside Sherlock. Almost as if in slow-motion, Sherlock watches him as he casually slips a hand through the crook of Sherlock’s elbow. With his free hand, he takes out his phone from the pocket of his jeans.

Sherlock’s breath catches.

John tilts his body slightly until he’s positioning the phone right on Sherlock’s face.

“Smile for the camera, Sherlock,” he says in a voice with a sing-song lilt and Sherlock starts, tilts to look at John in bare incredulity. John holds tighter to his arm and raises an eyebrow in mock-challenge.

“Smile, Sherlock,” he repeats.

Sherlock’s mind races. He remembers every detail, every contortion of every muscle on every face from which he’s stolen a smile so vividly that he can write a thirteen-step protocol. But John, John with his blue eyes catching the sunlight, John with his pale cheeks reflected in the glow of London, merely looks at him. In a flash, Sherlock realizes that this isn't _supposed_ to be mechanical, he isn't supposed to follow a thirteen-step plan that tell the muscles of his face to _move, dammit._ He grumbles out a vague _John,_ but his eyes feel full and burn against the light and he looks at John and hopes that John _understands_ , that John realizes the _thank you,_ the insurmountable gratitude in every fraction of every cell in his body. He looks at John and he thinks, he thinks, he thinks –

Until he suddenly, wonderfully, doesn’t.

Sherlock smiles. 

*

**Author's Note:**

> ahem. so this is mostly just weird and rambly and full of run-on sentences. It was an idea that just wouldn't let go until I decided to sit down and just *type*, and yes, I realize it sounds as weird on paper as it does in my head. Unfortunately, I have a lot of scenes around this idea running around in my head, so there is a chance I might turn this into a series if I'm able to flesh it out in any form resembling coherence.


End file.
